Six-Year Single Term: Jonathan, Eleven Govs May Miss Out

Serving Presidents and Governors may not be allowed to benefit from the single 6-year term being proposed under the amendment to the 199 Constitution.

Effectively, if passed as it is, President Goodluck Jonathan and 13 governors seeking re-election in the 2015 general elections would miss out.

In addition to President Jonathan, the governors of Bayelsa, Nasarawa, Kwara, Osun, Ogun, Ekiti, Oyo, Zamfara, Gombe, Imo, Borno, Kaduna and Kogi states are also affected by the proposed amendment.

Deputy Senate President and Chairman, Senate Committee on Constitution Review, Senator Ike Ekweremandu who dropped hint of this on Thursday said the new law, which bars serving president and governors from benefitting in the single 6-year term would take effect once it is passed by the National Assembly.

Ekweremadu, who briefed newsmen, said it would take a specific clause stating that the affected elected officials to be allowed to contest, to save them from losing out.

He said, “Those already serving should make sacrifices and excuse themselves from the system,” adding that it was aimed at preventing friction among interested parties.

The committee, he said, decided to bar serving vice president or deputy governors that assumed the positions of their bosses, due to circumstances of deaths, from participating in subsequent elections to retain the seats.

Throwing more light on why his committee rejected the request for creation of new states, he blamed stakeholders who submitted memoranda for not reading well, the various versions of the existing constitution which dwells on state creation, saying his committee should not be held responsible for the failure of any of the requests on state creation to pass through.

He said he owed Nigerians who any apology over the inability of the requests on state creation to scale through.

“Any person agitating for a state should study the constitution and get lawyers to guide them. This exercise should serve as a lesson to all of us agitating for state creation,” he insisted.